Stephen Foster

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Stephen Collins Foster (July 4, 1826 - January 13, 1864), known as "the father of American music", was an American songwriter known primarily for his parlor and minstrel music. Foster wrote over 200 songs; among his best-known are "Oh! Susanna", "Hard Times Come Again No More", "Camptown Races", "Old Folks at Home" ("Swanee River"), "My Old Kentucky Home", "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair", "Old Black Joe", and "Beautiful Dreamer". Many of his compositions remain popular more than 150 years after he wrote them. His compositions are thought to be autobiographical. He has been identified as "the most famous songwriter of the nineteenth century" and may be the most recognizable American composer in other countries. His compositions are sometimes referred to as "childhood songs" because they have been included in the music curriculum of early education. Most of his handwritten music manuscripts are lost, but copies printed by publishers of his day can be found in various collections.

Video Stephen Foster

Biography

There are many biographers who have published works on the life of Stephen Collins Foster, but details can differ widely. In addition, Foster wrote very little biographical information himself. His brother Morrison Foster destroyed much of the information about Stephen that he judged to reflect negatively upon the family.

Maps Stephen Foster

Early years

Stephen Foster was born on July 4, 1826. His parents were William Barclay Foster and Eliza Clayland Tomlinson. He was the youngest of three sisters and six brothers. Foster attended private academies in Allegheny, Athens, and Towanda, Pennsylvania. He received an education in English grammar, diction, the classics, penmanship, Latin, Greek, and mathematics. Though they lived in a northern city, his family did not support the abolition of slavery. His older brother Morrison was a notable influence throughout Stephen's life.

Foster was able to teach himself to play the clarinet, violin, guitar, flute and piano. He did not have formal instruction in composition but he was helped by Henry Kleber (1816-97), a German-born music dealer in Pittsburgh. Kleber was a songwriter, impresario, accompanist, and conductor.

In 1839, his elder brother William was serving his apprenticeship as an engineer at Towanda and thought Stephen would benefit from being under his supervision. The site of the Camptown Races is 30 miles (48 km) from Athens, PA, and 15 miles from Towanda. Stephen attended Athens Academy from 1839 to 1841. He wrote his first composition, "Tioga Waltz" while attending Athens Academy and performed it during the 1841 commencement exercises; he was 14. It was not published during the composer's lifetime, but it is included in the collection of published works by Morrison Foster.

Foster's education included a brief period at Jefferson College in Washington, Pennsylvania, (now Washington & Jefferson College). His tuition was paid, but he had little spending money. He left Canonsburg to visit Pittsburgh with another student and did not return.

During his teenage years, Foster was influenced by two men. Henry Kleber (1816-1897), one of Foster's few formal music instructors, was a classically trained musician who emigrated from Darmstadt, Germany, to Pittsburgh and opened a music store. Dan Rice was an entertainer, a clown, and blackface singer, making his living in traveling circuses.

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Career

In 1846, Foster moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, and became a bookkeeper with his brother's steamship company. While he was in Cincinnati, Foster penned his first successful songs in 1848-1849, among them "Oh! Susanna", which became an anthem of the California Gold Rush. In 1849, he published Foster's Ethiopian Melodies, which included the successful song "Nelly Was a Lady" as made famous by the Christy Minstrels. A plaque marks the site of Foster's residence in Cincinnati, where the Guilford School building is now located.

Then he returned to Pennsylvania and signed a contract with the Christy Minstrels. It was during this period that Foster would write most of his best-known songs: "Camptown Races" (1850), "Nelly Bly" (1850), "Ring de Banjo" (1851), "Old Folks at Home" (known also as "Swanee River", 1851), "My Old Kentucky Home" (1853), "Old Dog Tray" (1853), and "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair" (1854), written for his wife Jane Denny McDowell.

Many of Foster's songs were of the blackface minstrel show tradition popular at the time. Foster sought, in his own words, to "build up taste ... among refined people by making words suitable to their taste, instead of the trashy and really offensive words which belong to some songs of that order". Many of his songs had Southern themes, yet Foster never lived in the South and visited it only once in 1852, by riverboat voyage on his honeymoon on his brother Dunning's steamboat the Millinger, which took him down the Mississippi River to New Orleans.

In 1862 during the Civil War in a response to Abraham Lincoln's call for volunteers, Foster among other composers set the poem "We Are Coming, Father Abra'am" to music.

Foster's last four years were spent in New York City. Biographical information during this period of his life has not been located or remains lost, though correspondence to, from, and between other family members has been preserved.

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Death

Foster became ill with a fever in January 1864. Weakened, he fell in his hotel in the Bowery, cutting his neck. His writing partner George Cooper found him still alive, naked, lying in a pool of blood. Foster died in Bellevue Hospital three days later at the age of 37.

Other versions exist concerning Foster's death described by other biographers.

When Foster died, his leather wallet contained a scrap of paper that simply said, "Dear friends and gentle hearts", along with 38 cents in Civil War scrip and three U.S. pennies. The note is said to have inspired Bob Hilliard's lyric for "Dear Hearts and Gentle People" (1949). Foster was buried in the Allegheny Cemetery in Pittsburgh. After his death, Morrison Foster became his "literary executor". As such, he answered requests for copies of manuscripts, autographs, and biographical information. One of the best-loved of his works, "Beautiful Dreamer" was published shortly after his death.

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Music

Growing up in a section of the city where many European immigrants had settled, Foster was accustomed to hearing the music and musical styles of the Italian, Scots-Irish, and German residents in the neighborhood. He composed his first song when he was 14 and entitled it the "Tioga Waltz". The first song he had published was "Open thy Lattice Love" (1844). In addition to his well-known and familiar songs which are still widely performed, Foster wrote songs in support of both drinking (such as "My Wife Is a Most Knowing Woman" or "Mr. and Mrs. Brown" or "When the Bowl Goes Round") and temperance, such as "Comrades Fill No Glass for Me" or "The Wife".

Foster also authored many church hymns. The inclusion of his hymns in hymnals ended by 1910. Some titles of the hymns are: "Seek and ye shall find", "All around is bright and fair, While we work for Jesus", and "Blame not those who weep and sigh". Several rare Civil War-era hymns by Foster were performed by The Old Stoughton Musical Society Chorus: "The Pure, The Bright, The Beautiful"; "Over The River"; "Give Us This Day" and "What Shall The Harvest Be?"; on a disc compiled and edited by Roger Lee Hall and titled, "Glory, Hallelujah: Songs and Hymns of the Civil War Era."

Foster usually sent his handwritten scores directly to his publishers. The publishers kept the sheet music manuscripts and did not give them to libraries nor return them to his heirs. Some of his original, hand-written scores were bought and put into private collections and the Library of Congress.

Popular songs

Generally speaking, Foster's songs lyrics and melodies have often been changed and altered both by publishers, and performers.

"My Old Kentucky Home" is the official state song of Kentucky, adopted by the General Assembly on March 19, 1928. "Old Folks at Home" became the official state song of Florida, designated in 1935. Because of the song lyrics which are perceived in modern times to be derogatory, "Old Folks at Home" was modified with approval from the Stephen Foster Memorial; after a lengthy debate, the modified song was kept as the official state song, while "Florida (Where the Sawgrass Meets the Sky)" was added as the state anthem.

American baritone Nelson Eddy recorded 35 Foster songs over three recording sessions in July, August, and September 1947 on Columbia Records, in 78 format, 2 songs per record. Columbia issued these recordings in 1948 as Nelson Eddy in Songs of Stephen Foster (Volume 1: A-745 and Volume 2: A-795). In 2005, Jasmine Records compiled all 35 Foster songs in one CD, Nelson Eddy Sings the Stephen Foster Songbook, JASCD 421. "In these performances, arranger/conductor Robert Armbruster made every attempt to frame Nelson Eddy's voice with a simple, yet colorful, orchestral and choral background--the norm of Stephen Foster's time." (Liner notes by Robert Nickora July 2005).

American classical composer Charles Ives freely quoted a wide variety of Foster's songs in many of his own works.

Douglas Jimerson, a tenor from Baltimore who has released CDs of music from the Civil War era, released Stephen Foster's America in 1998. Just before his death in 2004, singer-songwriter Randy Vanwarmer completed an entire album of Stephen Foster songs; it was released posthumously as Sings Stephen Foster.

Ray Charles released a version of "Old Folks at Home" entitled "Swanee River Rock (Talkin' 'Bout That River)" which became his first pop hit in November 1957 (#34, R&B #14).

The tribute album, Beautiful Dreamer: The Songs of Stephen Foster won the Grammy for Best Traditional Folk album in 2005. Among the artists who are featured on the album are John Prine, Ron Sexsmith, Alison Krauss, Yo Yo Ma, Roger McGuinn, Mavis Staples, and Suzy Bogguss.

Singer/songwriter Syd Straw covered "Hard Times Come Again No More" on her 1989 album, Surprise. The same song (as "Hard Times") appears on Bob Dylan's 1992 album, Good as I Been to You. Jennifer Warnes did another version of this song on her 1979 album, Shot Through the Heart. The Byrds did a rock 'n roll version of "Oh Susanna" on their 1965 album, Turn Turn Turn., while James Taylor offered a traditional folk version of "Oh! Susanna" on his 1970 album, Sweet Baby James.

In 2012, performer and educator Jonathan Guyot Smith taught a college course devoted exclusively to the study of Foster's music and released a CD of Foster songs, Stephen Foster Melodies and Serenades for the American Parlor, which contains several seldom-heard Foster songs. The performances are in the style of a 19th-century parlor performance rather than in the manner of a formal concert.

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Critics and controversies

Historians speculate that Foster may have been "a drunkard". Thirty years after his death, one reporter described him as paying "the penalty of an irregular life", being "weak-willed" and writing songs about people of "a pathetic character".

Some interpretations of Foster's compositions in modern times consider them to be disparaging to African Americans. However, Foster unveiled the realities of slavery in his work while also imparting dignity to African-Americans in his compositions, especially as he grew as an artist. Foster was the first white person to publicly refer to an African-American woman as "a lady" in his composition "Nelly Was a Lady."

Foster composed many songs that were used in minstrel shows. This form of public entertainment lampooned African Americans as buffoonish, superstitious, without-a-care, musical, lazy, and dim-witted. In the early 1830s, these minstrel shows gained popularity. The shows evolved, and by 1848 blackface minstrel shows were a separate musical art form accessible to the general public (in contrast with opera, which was more upper-class).

Greenfield Village and the Henry Ford Museum

In 1935, Henry Ford ceremonially presented a new addition to his historical collection of early American memorabilia - the "Home of Stephen Foster". The structure was identified by notable historians of the time as being authentic and was then deconstructed and moved "piece by piece" from Lawrenceville, Pennsylvania (now Pittsburgh) to Greenfield Village, Michigan. Foster's niece insisted that it was not his birthplace, and in 1953 the claim was withdrawn. Greenfield Village still displays a structure that is identified as the birthplace of Stephen Foster. The Foster family stated that the original Foster birthplace structure was torn down in 1865.

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Legacy

Musical influence

• Early filmmakers selected Foster's songs for their work because his copyrights had expired and cost them nothing.
• Professor of Folklore and musician John Minton wrote a song titled "Stephen C. Foster's Blues".
• Erika M. Anderson, of the band EMA, refers to Foster's "Camptown Races" in the song "California", from past Life Martyred Saints (2011): "I bet my money on the bobtail nag/somebody bet on the bay."
• The Firesign Theatre makes many references to Foster's compositions in their CD, Boom Dot Bust (1999, Rhino Records)
• Larry Kirwan of Black 47 mixes the music of Foster with his own in the musical Hard Times, which earned a New York Times accolade in its original run: "a knockout entertainment". Kirwan gives a contemporary interpretation of Foster's troubled later years and sets it in the tumultuous time of the New York draft riots and the Irish-Negro relations of the period. A revival ran at the Cell Theater in New York in early 2014.
• Spike Jones recorded a comedy send-up "I Dream of Brownie in the Light Blue Jeans."
• The swing revival band Squirrel Nut Zippers released a song entitled "The Ghost of Stephen Foster."
• Humorist Stan Freberg imagined a 1950s style version of Foster's music in "Rock Around Stephen Foster" and, with Harry Shearer, had a sketch about Foster having writer's block in a bit from his "United States of America" project.
• Songwriter Tom Shaner mentions Stephen Foster meeting up with Eminem's alter ego "Slim Shady" on the Bowery in Shaner's song "Rock & Roll is A Natural Thing."
• The music of Stephen Foster was an early influence on the Australian composer Percy Grainger, who stated that hearing "Camptown Races" sung by his mother was one of his earliest musical recollections. He went on to write a piece entitled "Tribute to Foster," a composition for mixed choir, orchestra, and pitched wine glasses based on the melody of "Camptown Races."
• Art Garfunkel was cast as Stephen Foster and sang his songs in an elementary school play in Queens, New York

Television

• Two television shows about the life of Foster and his childhood friend (and later wife) Jeanie MacDowell were produced in Japan, the first in 1979 with 13 episodes, and the second from 1992 to 1993 with 52 episodes; both were titled Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair after the song of the same name.
• In the Honeymooners episode, "The $99,000 Answer," Ed Norton warms up on the piano by playing the opening to "Swanee River." Later, when Ralph returns to the game show, the first question asked is "Who is the composer of 'Swanee River'?" Ralph nervously responds, "Ed Norton," and loses the game.
• In a "Fractured Fairy Tales" segment of The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, Aladdin finds a lamp with a female genie with light brown hair, who immediately asks, "Are you Stephen Foster?"

Film

• Three Hollywood films have been made of Foster's life: Harmony Lane (1935) with Douglass Montgomery, Swanee River (1939) with Don Ameche, and I Dream of Jeanie (1952), with Bill Shirley. The 1939 production was one of Twentieth Century Fox's more ambitious efforts, filmed in Technicolor; the other two were low-budget affairs made by B-movie studios.
• In the film Tombstone, Billy Clanton (played by Thomas Haden Church) tries to bait Doc Holliday (Val Kilmer), who is playing a Chopin nocturne on the piano, by saying, "Is that 'Old Dog Tray'? That sounds like 'Old Dog Tray' to me." When the goad fails, Clanton asks whether Doc knows any other songs, like "'Camptown Races?', 'Oh Susanna', "You know, Stephen stinkin' Foster?!?"
• In the film A Million Ways to Die in the West, Seth MacFarlane's character Albert can't get a song out of his head. Charlize Theron's character suggests singing a different song, to which he replies, "There are only like 3 songs," and she adds, "And they're all by Stephen Foster." The song in question, "If You've Only Got a Mustache," was actually composed by Foster.

Other events

• "Stephen Foster! Super Saturday" is a day of thoroughbred racing during the Spring/Summer meet at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky. During the call to the post, selections of Stephen Foster songs are played by the track bugler, Steve Buttleman. The day is headlined by the Stephen Foster Handicap, a Grade I dirt race for older horses at 9 furlongs.
• 36 U.S.C. §140 designates January 13 as Stephen Foster Memorial Day, a United States National Observance. In 1936, Congress authorized the minting of a silver half dollar in honor of the Cincinnati Musical Center. Foster was featured on the obverse of the coin.
• "Stephen Foster Music Camp" is a summer music camp held on EKU's campus of Richmond, Kentucky. The camp offers piano courses, choir, band, and orchestra ensembles.

Art

• A public sculpture by Giuseppe Moretti honoring Foster and commemorating his song "Uncle Ned" sat in close proximity to the Stephen Foster Memorial until 2018. The statue was removed following complaints about the banjo-playing slave seated next to Foster.
• In Alms Park in Cincinnati, overlooking the Ohio River, there is a seated statue of him.
• The Hall of Fame for Great Americans in the Bronx, overlooking the Harlem River, has a bronze bust of him by artist Walter Hancock. Added in 1940, he is among only 98 honorees from 15 classes of distinguished men and women.
• In My Old Kentucky Home State Park in Bardstown, Kentucky, a musical, called The Stephen Foster Story has been performed since 1958. There is also a statue of him next to the Federal Hill mansion, where he visited relatives and which is the inspiration for My Old Kentucky Home. A painting by Howard Chandler Christy entitled, "Stephen Foster and the Angel of Genius" is on display in the park's art collection. The painting inspired Florence Foster Jenkins to author a tableau in which she personally plays the role of the angel depicted in Christy's painting. The scene was featured in the film Florence Foster Jenkins in 2016.

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Memorials

Foster is honored on the University of Pittsburgh campus with the Stephen Foster Memorial, a landmark building that houses the Stephen Foster Memorial Museum, the Center for American Music, as well as two theaters: the Charity Randall Theatre and Henry Heymann Theatre, both performance spaces for Pitt's Department of Theater Arts. It is the largest repository for original Stephen Foster compositions, recordings, and other memorabilia his songs have inspired worldwide.

Two state parks are named in Foster's honor: the Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park in White Springs, Florida and Stephen C. Foster State Park in Georgia. Both parks are on the Suwannee River. Stephen Foster Lake at Mount Pisgah State Park in Pennsylvania is also named in his honor.

One state park is named in honor of Foster's songs, My Old Kentucky Home, an historic mansion formerly named Federal Hill, located in Bardstown, Kentucky where Stephen is said to have been an occasional visitor according to his brother, Morrison Foster. The park dedicated a bronze statue in honor of Stephen's work.

The Lawrenceville (Pittsburgh) Historical Society, together with the Allegheny Cemetery Historical Association, hosts the annual Stephen Foster Music and Heritage Festival (Doo Dah Days!). Held the first weekend of July, Doo Dah Days! celebrates the life and music of one of the most influential songwriters in America's history. His home in the Lawrenceville Section of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, still remains on Penn Avenue nearby the Stephen Foster Community Center.

A 1900 statue of Foster by Giuseppe Moretti was located in Schenley Plaza, in Pittsburgh, from 1940 until 2018. On the unanimous recommendation of the Pittsburgh Art Commission, the statue was removed on April 26, 2018. Its new home has not yet been determined. It has a long reputation as the most controversial public art in Pittsburgh "for its depiction of an African-American banjo player at the feet of the seated composer. Critics say the statue glorifies white appropriation of black culture, and depicts the vacantly smiling musician in a way that is at best condescending and at worst racist."

See also

• The Stephen Foster Collection and archive - Most primary sources related to his life, family and music have been retained by the University of Pittsburgh Library System as the Foster Hall Collection housed in the Stephen Foster Memorial. These materials where obtained from philanthropists, donated by collectors or his heirs.

Notes

One of Stephen Foster's best-known songs, "Camptown Races", is actually titled "Gwine to Run All Night", though "Camptown Races" is the name that gained popularity.

References

Further reading

• Emerson, Ken, ed. (2010). Stephen Foster & Co.: Lyrics of the First Great American Songwriters. New York: The Library of America. ISBN 1-59853-070-4. OCLC 426803667. 
• Hamm, Charles (1983). Yesterdays: Popular Song in America. New York City: W. W. Norton & Co. ISBN 978-0393300628. 
• Hodges, Fletcher, Jr. (1939). A Pittsburgh Composer and His Memorial. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania. ASIN B01A8YVHHM. 
• Hodges, Fletcher, Jr. (1948). The Research Work of the Foster Hall Collection. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 
• Hodges, Fletcher, Jr. (1958). The Swanee River and a Biographical Sketch of Stephen Collins Foster. Whitefish, Montana: Literary Licensing, LLC. ISBN 978-1258193980. 
• Howard, John Tasker (March 1944). "The Literature on Stephen Foster". Notes - Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association. 1 (2): 10-15. doi:10.2307/891301. JSTOR 891301. 
• Howard, John Tasker (1945). Stephen Foster: America's Troubadour. New York City: Tudor Publishing Company. ASIN B0007ELPPI. 
• Milligan, Harold Vincent (1920). Stephen Collins Foster: A Biography Of America's Folk-Song Composer. Whitefish, Montana: Kessinger Publishing, LLC. ISBN 978-0548971864. 
• Momeweck, Evelyn (1973). Chronicles of Stephen Foster's Family. Associated Faculty Press, Inc. ISBN 978-0804617420. 
• "Foster Hall Collection". Center for American Music; University of Pittsburgh. Retrieved March 24, 2017. 
• "Pictorial Biography of Stephen Collins Foster" (PDF). Musical Courier. 1930. Retrieved March 24, 2017. 

External links

• Free scores by Stephen Foster at the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)
• Works by or about Stephen Foster at Internet Archive
• Stephen Foster on IMDb
• Stephen Foster at Find a Grave
• Archives of Stephen Foster at the University of Kentucky
• Stephen Foster discography at Discogs
• Pittsburgh Music History
• Hymns and songs by Stephen Foster

Music scores

• Sheet music for "I see her still in my dreams", Macon, GA: John C. Schreiner & Son, from the Confederate Imprints Sheet Music Collection
• Sheet music for "Parthenia to Incomar", Macon, GA: John C. Schreiner & Son, from the Confederate Imprints Sheet Music Collection
• "The Melodies of Stephen C. Foster" (online version) Pittsburgh, PA: T.M. Walker, Full sheet music book, 307 pages

Source of article : Wikipedia